Miers Nomination thing
Getting over Harriet or getting Harriet over?
Let-Down Lady - Harriet Miers isn't just no John Roberts. She's no Sandra Day O'Connor. By Emily Bazelon
Going into last weekend I figured if she got through the Sunday Talk
shows and the post-holiday news cycle her nomination would probably
last and go on through confirmation. Seven days later things
don't seem much different but each day like that makes it more
definite. If she continued to be resisted in strongly worded fashion -
particularly by people putting themselves on record, the nomination
would be finished. Either by direct withdrawal by the President, or by
the nominee bowing out on her own. The former is unlikely its not the
way this administration does business. When the administration's
spokesman goes out and appears to rule out the latter, they are trying
to send a signal that no one should try to push the candidate to that
path
White House Deflects Any Talk That Miers May Drop Out - New York Times.
Against the presidents institutional power, momentum's rules
require a countervailing force to be sharp and unrelenting. Any break
or pause, and the presidents conceit gains the day. I suppose you could
add all sorts of caveats to a statement like that : arguing the merits
of sharp and brittle resistance vs. slow and building. This is a
president who has run a popular and tight presidency and who's party
controls both houses of congress. Unless that boat hits a perfect
storm, it's coming into dock.
In many ways this nomination was a smart play all around -
given this administrations meta-normative desire for control and
personal loyalty above all else. Harriet Miers gives them a stealth
candidate with no paper trail and near certain dependable views. This
penchant
A Bid for Confirmation, Rather Than Convictions
reveals a weakness, though. The cronyism which seems protective and
uncomplex becomes a problem when the individuals involved are either
revealed, or come to be thought of, as not of sufficient caliber for
their assigned jobs. It also looks weak that the administration has
become so cloistered that they do not trust or do not want to use
existing processes for finding and vetting candidates for critical
positions. They do not trust the suggestions coming from sectors of
their own ranks, less ideological alignment concerns than the amount of
political capital these more intensive fights might involve, and the
inability to please everyone in the republican big tent with any one
candidate in any account.The president himself and the more Bush
centric parts of the administration may feel that the Bush Legacy may
primarily rest on different fronts and the part that rests with court
nominations, is adequately dispensed with a personal choice.
A person being named for the Supreme Court is different from
choices of people who are going to work for the president. The Court
does not work for the president, it is a third entire branch of
government with its own responsibilities, and people named there will
still be there when those who named them belong to political history.
The president seems to have realized belatedly the standard is
different. Andrew Card seems unclear on the difference entirely
drumming up her obseqious views on a strong executive as a selling
point (Froomkin [scroll] quoting Meyerson
notetaking on Card. Another reporter looking at this same argument line
commented he didn't know exactly who this was supposed to reassure
The administration didn't have its ducks lined up for this.
Less clear is why. A preoccupation of the administration's various grey
eminencies, autocrats, and hammer boys. A lazy habit of seeing
the base reflexively bow to the pater familiar. As well there are
several armed camps on the right currently bivouacking under an
accident of fate. There is in the republican grand
coalition as much that is happenstance amalgamation as it
is a fortress of unified conviction. Social Conservatives - the
religious right were at
short ends. This is a crowd that likes its assurances obvious. If not
obvious at least mysterious, which is where Dobsons' I've got a got a
secret - that Karl Rove told me enters in. The fiscal and property
conservatives are a different breed. Laura Bush's raising of the sexism
issue seemed a little hollow, but the point is valid. There is an
inherent sexism of the oligarch conservatives. Gender is a subtext to
assertions of "heavyweight" judges. There were few women among the
several candidate stables of the right. This last bit of coding which
occurs in both George Will's
Can This Nomination Be Justified? and Krauthammer's
Withdraw This Nominee bilious
op eds: the claim that what they want is an "Intellectual" on the
court, which is why they are disappointed in the presidents choice
Conservatives Confront Bush Aides
. They admit Miers will probably align with the right wing of the
court and vote reliably. What they mean by "Intellectual" is
bully. A demeanor beyond insightful, keen, nuanced and reasoned. A
personality leaning towards intimidating, dismissive, arrogant and
combative. This is what they feel deprived of The Right's Dissed Intellectuals. The University of Chicago Law School Faculty have a typepad web log and have been wieghing in on this
The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog.
The significant difference is the lack of deference being
shown to the White House across the board on this nomination. At first
face this seems to be evidence on a building exasperation with the
administration, over five long years of ill reasoned and indifferently
managed policies. Few seem inclined to soft the terms of their
disagreement, the contest seems to be who can voice their outrage
loudest. Any way you choose to look at this, it is a weather change
when republican Senators set staffers to work looking for a way out of
having to confirm Harriet Miers
G.O.P. Aides Add Voices to Resistance to Miers - New York Times .
The most disturbing thing about Harriet Miers, I take her
routine conservative bona fides "on faith", is the sickly deferential
admiration in which she holds George W. Bush, "one of the most
intelligent men she has ever known. Unworthy even questionable in
someone taking lifetime tenure as a judge, a Justice. Best if taken as
sycophantic and unreasoned. Worse if believed and taken as sincere.
- - -
19Oct05 I added a sentence after "bivoucking under an accident of fate" in an attempt to make that thought clearer.
11:50:29 PM  ;;
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